Let's Try This Again

The Ethics Board is an adjudicative board setup to render ethics opinions, as well as to review ethics complaints. The members who sit in judgment must be able to render fair and impartial decisions based on the evidence.
Adjudicative matters are those in which decision makers are required to conduct a hearing and make a decision based on the law and the facts in a particular case. There are parties to adjudicative matters, who have a personal stake in the decision that is made. As a result, minimum standards of due process apply, in order to ensure that the parties receive fair hearings.
It is also vital that persons of competence and integrity be encouraged to serve the on the City Ethics Board. The standards used by the City to select Board members to enforce the Code of Ethics should be interpreted and understood so as not to unreasonably frustrate or impede the recruitment and retention of those persons best qualified to serve it and the City.
It is understood, particularly in the instance of voluntary and uncompensated Board members actuated by their commitment to public service, that it is not reasonable to demand so complete a disassociation from the private sector as to preclude each and every possibility of a conflict of interest arising. Accordingly, the Council should consider the intention and motives as well as the extrinsic acts of those persons having a fiduciary relationship with the City. Although appearances and acts often outwardly manifest a person's intentions, motive becomes particularly relevant whenever the acts themselves are called into question as giving rise to even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The Ethics Board has been given the authority to act for and on behalf of the Council in ethics matters so that the circumstances which are being reviewed give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence. The number of technical and ethical problems of a legislator being brought before his own legislative body who have reasons to over or under emphasize the conflict for purely political reasons, whereas being before an independent, nonpartisan body of individuals who have no personal or political stake in the matter.